


On The Pier

by hestia_lacey



Series: On the Pier [1]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Angst, Episode Tag, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-18
Updated: 2011-04-18
Packaged: 2017-10-18 08:30:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/186944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hestia_lacey/pseuds/hestia_lacey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Following the events of The Shrine, Jeannie talks to John.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On The Pier

John is a jagged edge of black shadow cut across the pier deck when Jeannie finds him, body drawn into itself, his profile blade sharp in moonbeams that would be soft if they didn’t cast so stark a light on his face. He’s sitting close to the lip of the deck, long legs dangling over the open ocean; Jeannie knows he won’t tip over the edge even though it somehow seems to her that he’s barely holding on at all.

Crossing the bare open space between the doorway and John’s place on the pier verge feels dangerous, makes her heart race, but she came here to say something, something important, and Jeannie Miller has never let the risk in any situation stop her doing important things before.

“Hey,” she says when she finally reaches him, and something about the night sky, about the darkness and shades the moonlight casts around John makes her whisper.

“Hi,” John says, eyes fixed and distant, bright and broken like fractured glass. He doesn’t move at all, doesn’t say anything else, eyes and face blank and black as the space between the stars in the sky. John Sheppard makes himself a bare canvas to others; it’s difficult for the untrained eye to see anything on him. He paints over everything that really means anything but Jeannie lives to peel away the layers of the universe, to know all the parts that are hidden, and once you’ve built bridges between different realities it’s easy to build them between people. So Jeannie breathes carefully into the silence around them and settles herself quietly beside John.

“Mer said I’d find you here,” she says. And then: “He’s awake.”

John’s eyes slice across to her, quick and bright and still sharp as glass. His voice is rough and raw when he asks, “Is he…?” He can’t finish the question; Jeannie can see the way the words stick in his throat, too big and too much to be spoken aloud.

She can’t help her smile, can feel the elation spreading open across her own face. “Yeah,” she manages around a fierce, vivid flare of happiness, and saying it feels so good she has to say it again. “Yeah, he is.”

“Good,” John says, shifting slightly as though he might reach out to her. “ That’s…” and Jeannie sees John smile, brilliant and beautiful and wide as the sky for just a second before he ducks his head and hides it away.

“Yeah,” she says again, laughing, laying her fingers over John’s where they spread across the deck. After a moment, John turns his hand over, stuttering and slow, and laces his fingers with hers. “Good,” he repeats, pressing his palm awkwardly against hers, hidden smile evident in the warmth of the word.

John has gone loose now, as though the news that Rodney is awake, the confirmation that he’s okay – really okay – unravelled the knots that had bound him into himself. And if just hearing about it is enough to do that, Jeannie thinks actually seeing Rodney would unwind John completely. She’s not sure that’s a good thing right now, but she still has important things to do here.

“You should go see him,” she says, squeezing John’s fingers.

John twists his hand abruptly out from under hers, body coiling up again at the suggestion. “I will,” he says eventually, rubbing his palms across his eyes, eyes that are back to fractured glass. And God, she doesn’t want to do this, but she’s starting to think the only way to do this is to shatter the glass completely, let the things held behind it fall out.

“He’s asking for you. He always asks for you.” And it’s a soft truth, a barely there whisper, but she can see the way it hits John.

“Jeannie…” he says, desperate and low, shifting as though he might stand up, wants to get away.

“And you always go to him”, she presses. “Always.” There are tears she can’t help thick in her voice when she says “Mer - Rodney… He’s never had that before. Our parents – they weren’t… and for a long time we – we didn’t really...”

“Jeannie, you - ” John’s hand is hesitant above her shoulder, an anxious flutter, as though he wants to push her words away and offer her comfort without knowing how or why, all at the same time. Impulsively, recklessly, she captures it in her own and uses her other hand to turn John’s face towards hers. He won’t look at her, eyes tripping to one side, and tugs weakly at his hand.

Jeannie tightens her grip, ducks her own head to catch his gaze because she needs to know this is getting through, that he understands. John stills his struggles, but doesn’t relax, still wound up and vibrating with the suppressed desire to push her away and just go. When she’s sure she has his attention, she takes a steadying breath and says what she came out here to say.

“You always go to him, John.”

John stops. For a long, long moment he’s completely and utterly still, shocked pliant in Jeannie’s hands. She can see the moment the glass finally splinters and a hundred secrets that aren’t so secret anymore spill into the night. John makes a soft, distressed sound low at the back of his throat and Jeannie can see what’s about to happen, the way John’s about to fly apart completely, so she shifts her body to the side and uses her hold on his hands and his neck to draw him into her, give him an anchor.

He doesn’t even fight it, just slumps into her side like a puppet with cut strings. He’s shaking, trembling under her hands; all the frantic fear, the anxiety, the despair of the last few days rolling over him in waves. Jeannie rests her cheek against John’s hair and lets him shiver apart. It makes something inside her clench up tight, and she finds herself humming softly to him like she does with Madison when she has nightmares, like Mer used to do for her when she was six years old and terrified of all the screaming downstairs.

The moon is low in the sky by the time John is still again. When he speaks, it’s with a voice scraped raw. “I… I have to,” he says into the curve of her neck, and it sounds as though he’s pleading with her to understand that fact. He twists his hands into the fabric of her shirt and chokes, “ I can’t - ”

“I know,” Jeannie says, stroking her hands through his hair. “I know.” And she does, appreciates it more than she can put into words. It took her a little while to see, a little bit longer to look past all the assumptions she’d made about John and her brother, about what her brother needed, but she gets it now.

John takes a deep breath and gathers himself together, pushing awkwardly out of her arms and setting himself back onto the pier a little way away from her. He catches her eyes and blushes; Jeannie smiles at him, a small, understanding smile, and ruffles his hair. John bats her hand away with a rueful grin before his hand rubs at the nape of his neck and his face turns suddenly serious again.

“You can’t say anything.” He says, twisting his fingers in his lap, swallowing. “He’s… there’s Keller.”

Looking at John, at his face, Jeannie can’t understand how Meredith can miss this.

How he doesn’t see that John Sheppard is so incredibly in love with him, that John loves him so much he’ll give up parts of himself just so Meredith has a chance to be happy. Jeannie wants to march down to the infirmary and explain it, shout at him for not seeing, make Meredith understand exactly what he has, what he’s missing, but it’s not her choice.

“I won’t,” she says instead. “I promise.”

John sighs, and turns back to look across the ocean again, out into the sky. “Thank you,” he says, so quiet Jeannie almost doesn’t hear it. She lifts her face to look out at the same stars, the same waves glittering under the moonlight and decides to stay out on the pier with John just a little while longer.


End file.
